Turns out men and women aren't so different.

That's according to new research by psychologists who examined personality traits, such as being good at math, being aggressive, being a good listener or empathetic, playing video games or talking with friends -- that many of us believe split men and women.

"Just because men and women look very different and sometimes have different interests and behaviors, we shouldn't assume that what goes on in our heads is just as different, at least with the psychological characteristics we looked at," said Bobbi Carothers, a data analyst at the Center for Public Health Systems Science at Washington University in St. Louis. At the risk of being cliche, I'd say the take-home message is "Don't judge a book by its cover."

Valentine's Day Alert, Anywhere USA: A woman punches another woman to seize the last red-flocked candy box at the drug store. Children fear going to school for they might not get as many valentine cards as some other kids.

What used to be honorable behavior during an onslaught of the citadel, has become 'aggression normale'? in Buy-Me-Land. What used to be a place of learning for the kidlettes, has in some places become a daily injection of the poison called, 'If I don't have proof from all others by acclamation, I am a nobody.'

Commerce can be admired for advertising those many artifacts which help people to better live; those remedios and medicines that are thereby shown within reach of some and the many.

But, how can we understand the kind of commerce that $ee$ only it$elf and nothing more... and by $o doing, $teals the bedrock of our culture by covering over the real stories that sustain us?

The 18th century natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that the necks of giraffes lengthened as a consequence of the cumulative effort, across generations, to reach leaves just out of their grasp. This view of evolution was largely abandoned with the advent of modern genetic theories to explain the transmission of most important traits and many medical illnesses across generations.

However, there has long been the impression that major life events, like psychological traumas, not only have effects on individuals who directly experience these events, but also have effects on their children. For example, cross-generational effects have been well-documented in the children of Nazi death camp survivors. Similar issues have been reported in the context of mood disorders and addiction. Until recently, these trans-generational effects were attributed to changes in the way that parents treated their children or the child's reaction to learning about the parent's history.

Appendix H. Premonitions by Rupert Sheldrake © Rupert Sheldrake 2012 [1]

Many animals seemed to anticipate the great Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004, although their reactions were much closer to the actual event. Elephants in Sri Lanka and Sumatra moved to high ground before the giant waves struck; they did the same in Thailand, trumpeting beforehand.

According to villagers in Bang Koey, Thailand, a herd of buffalo were grazing by the beach when they 'suddenly lifted their heads and looked out to sea, ears standing upright.' They turned and stampeded up the hill, followed by bewildered villagers, whose lives were thereby saved.

At Ao Sane beach, near Phuket, dogs ran up to the hilltops, and at Galle in Sri Lanka, dog owners were puzzled when their animals refused to go for their usual morning walk on the beach.

In Cuddalore District in south India, buffaloes, goats and dogs escaped by moving to higher ground, and so did a nesting colony of flamingoes.

In the Andaman Islands, 'stone age' tribal groups moved away from the coast before the disaster, alerted by the behaviour of animals.

How did they know? The usual speculation is that the animals picked up tremors caused by the under-sea earthquake. But this explanation is unconvincing. There would have been tremors all over South East Asia, not just in the afflicted coastal areas.

Some animals anticipate other kinds of natural disaster like avalanches, and even man-made catastrophes. During the Second World War, many families in Britain and Germany relied on their pets' behaviour to warn them of impending air raids before official warnings were given. The animal reactions occurred when enemy planes were still hundreds of miles away, long before the animals could have heard them coming. Some dogs in London anticipated the explosion of German V-2 rockets. These missiles were supersonic and could not have been heard in advance.

A new study has shown that objectification can make college-aged women more accepting of the status quo and less likely to engage in social activism, potentially contributing to gender inequality.

"My research focused on self-objectification, which is a self-perspective that many women adopt as a primary consequence of regular encounters of sexual objectification," the study's author, Rachel M. Calogero of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, explained to Raw Story.

The study, published last month in Psychological Science, found that women who were primed to evaluate themselves based on their appearance and sexual desirability had a decreased motivation to challenge gender-based inequalities and injustices.

Concerns and anxieties about one's close relationships appear to function as a chronic stressor that can compromise immunity, according to new research.

In the study, researchers asked married couples to complete questionnaires about their relationships and collected saliva and blood samples to test participants' levels of a key stress-related hormone and numbers of certain immune cells.

The research focused on attachment anxiety. Those who are on the high end of the attachment anxiety spectrum are excessively concerned about being rejected, have a tendency to constantly seek reassurance that they are loved, and are more likely to interpret ambiguous events in a relationship as negative.

Married partners who were more anxiously attached produced higher levels of cortisol, a steroid hormone that is released in response to stress, and had fewer T cells - important components of the immune system's defense against infection - than did participants who were less anxiously attached.

With Valentine's Day looming, many married couples will wish marital bliss for their single friends. At the same time, many singles will pity their coupled friends' loss of freedom. People like to believe that their way of life - whether single or coupled - is the best for everyone, especially if they think their relationship status is unlikely to change, according to a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study suggests that this bias may influence how we treat others, even in situations where relationship status shouldn't matter.

Research shows that feeling "stuck" within a particular social system leads people to justify and rationalize that system. Researchers Kristin Laurin of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and David Kille and Richard Eibach of the University of Waterloo wondered whether this kind of rationalization might also apply to a person's relationship status.

"We often become evangelists for our own lifestyles," the researchers observe. "When it comes to our relationship status, we are rarely content to simply say 'being single works for me' or 'being in a relationship suits my disposition.'"

"Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others."

~Parker Palmer

Remember the old cliché? "Take care of yourself first or you will have nothing left to give others." Or, " we can't give what we don't have." But what is self-care really? Why is it so difficult and why do we feel guilty about doing it?

We were all given this special house to live in... our own body, mind and soul. It is our responsibility to take good care of it and treat it with ultimate respect. It carries within our special gifts and talents that are uniquely ours. Self-care is about seeking and nurturing internal validation. It is finding the sweet child within and giving him or her soothing comfort, reassurance, and warm, loving thoughts and wishes. It is about taking care of the internal emotional side of our being and learning self-compassion.

Adult children of narcissistic parents and certainly many others too, were often told they were selfish as children. It is normal for children to express desires and wishes and many times stressed out parents, feeling their own guilt or issues will unwittingly put this label on a child. It is a destructive move for the child because we optimally want to encourage children to have a voice and speak their feelings. This is how they develop a sense of self.

We've heard the clichés: "It was love at first sight," "It's inner beauty that truly matters," and "Opposites attract."

But what's really at work in selecting a romantic or sexual partner?

University of Notre Dame Sociologist Elizabeth McClintock studies the impacts of physical attractiveness and age on mate selection and the effects of gender and income on relationships. Her research offers new insights into why and when Cupid's arrow strikes.

In one of her studies, "Handsome Wants as Handsome Does," published in Biodemography and Social Biology, McClintock examines the effects of physical attractiveness on young adults' sexual and romantic outcomes (number of partners, relationship status, timing of sexual intercourse), revealing the gender differences in preferences.

Researchers at Uppsala University have, together with Brazilian collaborators, discovered a new group of nerve cells that regulate processes of learning and memory. These cells act as gatekeepers and carry a receptor for nicotine, which can explain our ability to remember and sort information.

The discovery of the gatekeeper cells, which are part of a memory network together with several other nerve cells in the hippocampus, reveal new fundamental knowledge about learning and memory. The study is published today in Nature Neuroscience.

The hippocampus is an area of the brain that is important for consolidation of information into memories and helps us to learn new things. The newly discovered gatekeeper nerve cells, also called OLM-alpha2 cells, provide an explanation to how the flow of information is controlled in the hippocampus.

"It is known that nicotine improves cognitive processes including learning and memory, but this is the first time that an identified nerve cell population is linked to the effects of nicotine", says Professor Klas Kullander at Uppsala University.

Humans think, learn and memorize with the help of nerve cells sending signals between each other. Some nerve cells send signals far away to other areas of the brain, while other neurons send signals within the same area. Local nerve circuits in the hippocampus process impressions and turn some of them into memories. But how does this work? And how can nicotine improve this mechanism?

The new research study literally sheds new light on this intriguing mechanism.